Economics Journal: Do Celebrities Really Make a Difference?

Aamir Khan during a press conference following the broadcast of his television debut ‘Satyamev Jayate’ in Mumbai, May 6.

Whether it’s George Clooney on the crisis in Sudan or Angelina Jolie on the Millennium Development Goals, international celebrities aren’t shy about weighing in on pressing social issues close to their heart. That phenomenon now seems to have come to India too, in a big way.

I’m of course referring to Aamir Khan’s talk show “Satyameva Jayate” and spinoff syndicated newspaper column. In just its first four episodes, the show has looked unflinchingly at female feticide, sexual abuse of children, dowry and most recently the failures of public healthcare in India. These aren’t new issues that Mr. Khan is bringing to light — television, print and social media have dealt with such issues and many others for some time. But it is the first time that an A-list celebrity has tackled such a range of issues in a weekly talk show in Hindi aimed at the vast bulk of television viewers.

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Undoubtedly these are important, but after watching the most recent episode, I started wondering whether the involvement of a celebrity such as Mr. Khan makes a real difference on the ground? To put it bluntly, is it entertainment or is it a new way of promoting public policy? Or is Mr. Khan merely stepping into a vacuum created by the disarray in the traditional political space and the apparent fizzling out of Anna Hazare’s anticorruption crusade?

On the surface at least, Mr. Khan does appear to be having an impact. In the immediate aftermath of the show’s first episode, there was a political reaction in Rajasthan state, which had been singled out for its high incidence of female feticide. The state’s chief minister acknowledged that the show had created awareness about the problem, while more recently , the Sarpanch, or head of a local council, in one village reportedly took up the issue and formed a six member committee to monitor pregnant women in the community, and if necessary file police cases against people suspected of engaging in female feticide. He explicitly refers to Mr. Khan’s television show as his inspiration.

Echoing this sentiment, most people believe that celebrities do have an impact on people’s behavior. But economists and other social scientists find it hard to pin down the exact mechanisms. It used to be thought by social psychologists and sociologist that celebrities affected behavior very directly, in that people tended to identify with their favorite stars and listen to what they had to say. The world over, marketing people obviously believe this, since they pay huge sums to sports stars, movie stars and other celebrities to endorse products.

More recent research suggests that the effect could be more subtle and indirect. A 2011 studyby three Dutch behavioral scholars, Siegwart Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel, argues that celebrities affect people not so much through identification, but rather through their effect on social norms. More specifically, they suggest that a celebrity endorsement of a good cause “activates” a social norm that might have been passive. For instance, in an experiment, two Dutch celebrities, a male sportsman and a female television personality, endorsed a campaign against littering. This appeared to have an impact on the preferences of their test subjects (university students) to keeping the environment clean. Interestingly, their research also showed that a celebrity’s impact had this effect if he or she received positive publicity, but disappeared and even went the other way if a celebrity’s image had been tarnished.

The apparent early success of Mr. Khan as an advocate of causes he cares about does seem to fit this research. Unlike other Bollywood personalities with rather colorful and checkered public profiles, Mr. Khan has maintained a squeaky clean image and has never been embroiled in the kinds of legal or other controversies that have overtaken some of his peers. And as the Dutch research suggests, a viewer of his show wouldn’t have to identify with Mr. Khan to be affected by his message.

But creating awareness on the one hand and having a meaningful impact on policy or outcomes on the other are very different. The well-meaning Sarpanch planning to file police cases against women who may have practiced female feticide might end up punishing people who are victims themselves. In patriarchal societies women may be coerced by their families to engage in female feticide or, for that matter, sex selective abortion. An overzealous local official looking to file police cases might well miss out on this important possibility. Paradoxically, good intentions inspired by Mr. Khan’s television show might not lead to good outcomes if the response by officials is clumsy and heavy-handed. Ironically enough, the women profiled in the show’s episode on female feticide gave wrenching accounts of being forced to do engage in feticide under pressure from their families.

While the involvement of high profile celebrities certainly helps bring awareness and financial resources to their cherished causes, it’s much less clear that the remedies they’re backing make good economic or political sense. For instance, economists fiercely debate the merits of the Millennium Development Goals, but if you were to take celebrity endorsements at their word, achieving these is synonymous with economic development itself.

Mr. Khan’s most recent show on healthcare and his syndicated column seem already to be veering in the direction of oversimplification and caricature. While he’s right to point to the ills of the public health care system in India, his proposed remedy is nothing other than the orthodox left wing prescription of pouring more resources into the government run sector and tightening control on private medical colleges.

But to be fair to Mr. Khan, it would be difficult to bring in a great deal of subtlety and nuance as well as the necessary follow-up when tackling a major new social problem every week. Perhaps it’s just sophisticated entertainment, after all.

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